Faculty Members in News

Prof. Koel Chaudhury, SMST, wins the Labhsetwar award
Jan 29, 2018

Prof. Koel Chaudhury of the SMST has been selected for the for the prestigious Labhsetwar award for her contributions in the field of women's health.

This prestigious award is given by Drs. Anant and Lata Charitable Trust, Nagpur and Labhsetwar Foundation USA for outstanding contributions in the field of reproductive health. The link for the award details is provided below:

Prof. Sudip K. Ghosh, Professor, Department of Biotechnology has been elected as a Fellow of the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology for the Year 2017.
Jan 25, 2018

Professor K. N. Tiwari, Department of Agricultural & Food Engineering has been selected by the Indian Water Resources Society for "Eminent Water Resources Scientist Award" for the year 2016.
Jan 15, 2018

Professor K. N. Tiwari, Department of Agricultural & Food Engineering has been selected by the Indian Water Resources Society for "Eminent Water Resources Scientist Award" for the year 2016.

Dr. Mahitosh Mandal, Associate Professor, School of Medical Science & Technology has been elected for the Fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Jan 11, 2018

Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Dean (SRIC) and Head, School of Medical Science and Technology has been conferred with the Fellowship of The Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom.
Jan 8, 2018

Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Dean (SRIC) and Head, School of Medical Science and Technology has been conferred with the Fellowship of The Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom.

Dr. Saptarshi Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering has been selected for the "IEI Young Engineers Award 2017-2018" in Computer Engineering by the Institution of Engineers (India).
Dec 27, 2017

Dr. Saptarshi Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering has been selected for the "IEI Young Engineers Award 2017-2018" in Computer Engineering by the Institution of Engineers (India).

Prof. Sirshendu De, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering has been conferred with Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship by the Indian National Academy of Engineering for three years starting January 2018.
Dec 23, 2017

Prof. Sirshendu De, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering has been conferred with Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship by the Indian National Academy of Engineering for three years starting January 2018.

Prof. Sirshendu De, Professor and Head, Department of Chemical Engineering has been selected for Hindustan Dorr-Oliver Award of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) for the Year 2017 for Excellence in use of Science and Technology in Rural Development.
Nov 29, 2017

Prof. Sirshendu De, Professor and Head, Department of Chemical Engineering has been selected for Hindustan Dorr-Oliver Award of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) for the Year 2017 for Excellence in use of Science and Technology in Rural Development.

Dr. Abhijit Das, Assistant Professor, School of Bioscience is selected for the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship 2016-17 by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.
Nov 27, 2017

Dr. Abhijit Das, Assistant Professor, School of Bioscience is selected for the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship 2016-17 by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Prof. Nikhil Singha and his research team have developed a self-healable polymer for coating and paint applications
Nov 1, 2017

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have invented a smart polymeric material which can be healed or self-repaired by heating if there are micro-cracks or scratches. The research team at the Institute’s Centre for Rubber Technology under the leadership of Prof. Nikhil Singha has developed acrylic polymers having specific functional groups. The product is created through a single step reaction with the post-polymerization process taking less than a minute. Organic compounds required for the product are also readily available at economical prices.

This material can be used as a coating on glass or metal adds an ultrafast self-healing capacity without the use of any external reagent. This could be of significant use in industrial products and consumer products which are painted as finished products and are damage prone such as vehicles, glass exteriors etc.

This process of self-healing or intrinsic healing is achieved only through the application of temperature at about 130-degree Celsius. The repairing process is completed in less than an hour. The properties of the material will not be changed even after self-repairing.

So the removal of a scratch on your new car may not need a fresh paint anymore but only heating, if coated with this material while production. This will also bring down repairing cost as external reagents are not required.

This material will have applications in self-repairing coatings and paintings in the respective industries, as commented by Prof. Singha who has recently been awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK. The research has recently been featured in the ChemComm published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, London.

“This is relatively a new area research with the first research paper being published in Nature Chemistry only in 2014. However, the novelty of the research by the IIT Kharagpur team is the self-healing quality and non-requirement of external reagent unlike previous research which makes repairs faster and capable of sustaining multiple repairs” said researcher Prantik Mondal.

“We are also working to make this anti-fouling, anti-bacterial etc,” added Prof. Singha.

In fact, Prof. Singha’s research group is working in the development of self-healing polymeric material based on controlled polymerization and Diels-Alder ‘click’ reaction during last several years. One of their works was featured in Editor’s spotlight article in Materials Views published by Wiley in 2013. However, this present self-healing system is much faster than earlier one.

Prof. M. K. Tiwari, Deptt. of Industrial and Systems Engineering selected for the Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis Distinguished Educator Award for Management in the year 2017 by the Operational Research Society of India.
Oct 31, 2017

Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has been selected as the first recipient of the Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis Distinguished Educator Award for Management in the year 2017 by the Operational Research Society of India.

Prof. Anupam Basu, Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering and currently the Head, Center for Education Technology has been appointed as Director, National Institute of Technology Durgapur.
Oct 25, 2017

Prof. Anupam Basu, Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering and currently the Head, Center for Education Technology has been appointed as Director, National Institute of Technology Durgapur.

Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering elected as Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Oct 6, 2017

Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Head, School of Medical Science & Technology and Associate Dean, Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy has been elected as Fellow ofthe American Physical Society.

Prof. Indranil Manna, Professor, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering and currently Director, IIT Kanpur has been honored with "IIM – Honorary Membership" by the Indian Institute of Metals.

Professor Samit K. Ray, Professor, Department of Physics and currently the Director, S. N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata has been elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India for the year 2017.
Oct 3, 2017

Professor Samit K. Ray, Professor, Department of Physics and currently the Director, S. N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata has been elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India for the year 2017.

Researchers from the Dept. of Electronics and Electrical Communications at IIT Kharagpur, have developed a visual technology for removal of effects of rain from videos in real-time and display it on the windscreen of vehicles to increase the clarity of the view.

Accidents due to low visibility during heavy rain are a major concern all over the world. With smart cities and advanced transportation, this cannot persist and a technological solution was much awaited. Also, the solution needed to give real-time visual output with least errors as there is considerable risk involved in case any deviation in the imaging.

The technology, Real-time Rain Removal from Videos is a proprietary algorithm which has a big advantage for Driver Assistance Systems (DAS) that uses video information to impart traffic related information. It will also increase the performance of various DAS algorithms like self-steering from white line recognition, distance adjustment between cars and road signs detection.

“The technology is envisioned to be used to enhance the safety of air, rail, ship and auto transportation by providing on-screen visualization of clear videos in rainy conditions. The visual acuity of rainy videos captured by surveillance cameras can also be enhanced by this algorithm” said Lead researcher Prof. Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, faculty at IIT Kharagpur.

“In the proposed solution, time evolution properties of the consecutive video frames are analysed and the detection of regions affected by rain along with their restoration is proposed. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed algorithm does not assume the shape, size, direction and velocity of the raindrops and the intensity of rain, which makes it robust to different rain conditions. It is also able to distinguish moving objects from the rain regions in the video. This approach requires less number of frames for removal of rain from videos, reducing the delay and execution time of the algorithm and thus providing better frame rates than other approaches” explained researcher Abhishek Kr. Tripathi.

The technology has been patented internationally by the researchers under the name “Method and Apparatus for Detection and Removal of Rain from Videos using Temporal and Spatiotemporal Properties”.

“Instead of working on the colour components, the proposed algorithm works only on the intensity of the component of the video, so for autonomous driving/surveillance applications which do not require the videos to be displayed on a screen, we can work directly on monochrome videos rather than colour videos. Use of a single component (intensity) instead of three colour components further reduces the execution time of the algorithm” added Abhishek.

Professor Amiya R. Mohanty, Department of Mechanical Engineering has been elected as Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Sep 12, 2017

Dr. Aritra Hazra, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering selected for the INAE Young Engineer Award 2017 and consequently admitted as Young Associate of Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Sep 11, 2017

Dr. Aritra Hazra, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering has been selected for the INAE Young Engineer Award 2017 and consequently has been admitted as Young Associate of Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Researchers from the Dept. of Electronics and Electrical Communications at IIT Kharagpur, have developed a visual technology for removal of effects of rain from videos in real-time and display it on the windscreen of vehicles to increase the clarity of the view.

Accidents due to low visibility during heavy rain are a major concern all over the world. With smart cities and advanced transportation, this cannot persist and a technological solution was much awaited. Also, the solution needed to give real-time visual output with least errors as there is considerable risk involved in case any deviation in the imaging.

The technology, Real-time Rain Removal from Videos is a proprietary algorithm which has a big advantage for Driver Assistance Systems (DAS) that uses video information to impart traffic related information. It will also increase the performance of various DAS algorithms like self-steering from white line recognition, distance adjustment between cars and road signs detection.

“The technology is envisioned to be used to enhance the safety of air, rail, ship and auto transportation by providing on-screen visualization of clear videos in rainy conditions. The visual acuity of rainy videos captured by surveillance cameras can also be enhanced by this algorithm” said Lead researcher Prof. Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, faculty at IIT Kharagpur.

“In the proposed solution, time evolution properties of the consecutive video frames are analysed and the detection of regions affected by rain along with their restoration is proposed. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed algorithm does not assume the shape, size, direction and velocity of the raindrops and the intensity of rain, which makes it robust to different rain conditions. It is also able to distinguish moving objects from the rain regions in the video. This approach requires less number of frames for removal of rain from videos, reducing the delay and execution time of the algorithm and thus providing better frame rates than other approaches” explained researcher Abhishek Kr. Tripathi.

The technology has been patented internationally by the researchers under the name “Method and Apparatus for Detection and Removal of Rain from Videos using Temporal and Spatiotemporal Properties”

“Instead of working on the colour components, the proposed algorithm works only on the intensity of the component of the video, so for autonomous driving/surveillance applications which do not require the videos to be displayed on a screen, we can work directly on monochrome videos rather than colour videos. Use of a single component (intensity) instead of three colour components further reduces the execution time of the algorithm” added Abhishek.

Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and currently the Deputy Director of our Institute has been chosen for the ICI - Life Time Achievement Award for the year 2017 by the Indian Concrete Institute in appreciation of his contributions to the concrete industry.

AmbuSens: a Lifesaver Technology from IITKGP
Jun 2, 2017

IIT Kharagpur has come up with a one-of-a-kind lifesaver technology that can be fitted in an ambulance to ensure remote monitoring of patient condition by the doctors even before they reach the hospital!

This technology named “AmbuSens” has been developed in the SWAN lab of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at IIT Kharagpur. AmbuSens is capable of wireless monitoring of various physiological parameters like ECG, heart-rate, temperature and blood-pressure. The system utilizes a unique hashing-based mechanism (patent filed) to preserve patient’s data confidentiality while simultaneously using the analytic and computing power of cloud computing. The web interface of the AmbuSens system provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for doctors and paramedics alike with data visualization tools such as real-time ECG graph rendering and can be accessed from internet-enabled laptops, tablets and smartphones.

“There is no such technology at present that can help doctors at remote at the hospital to continuously monitor the condition of the patient when the latter is on the move. This technology will be a boon for the referral patients who are transported from a hospital in remote area to a city hospital. Currently in such situations apart from family members, a medical technician companies a critical patient on an ambulance. But this technician has limited knowledge. Now with the doctors being able to monitor the patients on transit they can suggest medical interventions to the technician. This can be lifesaving,” said the principal investigator for developing this system Prof. Sudip Misra, Department of CSE, IIT Kharagpur.

The embedded system of AmbuSens includes both hardware and software. The system currently leverages wireless on-body sensors, cellular (3G/4G) and wireless technologies (Wi-Fi) and cloud computing to achieve seamless real-time monitoring and management of patient data. In future the system will work even with irregular Internet connection.

Here is how AmbuSens works – the referred hospital and the referee hospital as well as the ambulance will have laptops or tablets with internet connection. The patient will be fitted with wireless body sensors, which will help doctors of both referred and referee hospitals to continuously monitor the health condition of the ambulatory patients in real-time. Apart from monitoring critical patients referred from one hospital to the other an ambulance fitted with AmbuSens can be life saving for accident victims or cardiac patients who need to be transported to the hospital immediately.

This technology is several steps ahead of telemedicine where the doctor can see the patients but do not have wireless real time monitoring of their health condition. “We conducted successful field trials of the developed system at All India institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar and BC Roy technological hospital (BCRTH), IIT Kharagpur. The trials were conducted on various patients (both male and female) admitted in intensive care unit (ICU), cardiac unit and patients coming for normal health check-up (OPD). Patients within age group of 10-70 years were considered for the trials. The duration of trial for each patient was around 20-30 minutes,” said Prof. Misra.

The researchers are currently working on further upgrading AmbuSens so that in future the technology can ensure advance prediction of a likely to have emergency (like cardiac arrest) of the patient in the immediate future. This will enable patients to get care before onset of emergency, potentially saving lives. Several sensors are also being developed to help monitor many more health parameters of the patients on the move.

A state government from Northern part of India has already shown interest in this technology to help monitoring patient conditions in difficult terrains where the number of hospitals are limited.

The principal investigator for the development of this system was Prof. Sudip Misra, Department of CSE, IIT Kharagpur. The co-investigators were Dr. I. Banerjee (BCRT Hospital, IIT Kharagpur) and Dr. Saurav Sarkar (AIIMS Bhubaneswar). The project staffs who worked on it are Niloy Saha, Subhadeep Sarkar, and Pradyumna Kumar Bishoyi.

The salient features of the AmbuSens system are as follows:

1. Telemedicine and Remote Healthcare: Utilizes wireless on-body sensors for improved mobility and user-convenience. Enables easy trend tracking and remote monitoring by specialized medical personnel without having to be physically present.2. Improved Emergency Response Time: Instant remote monitoring and feedback by the skilled medical professionals to paramedics for improved emergency diagnosis and treatment.3. Real Time Patient Status Monitoring: Continuous real-time monitoring of the patient from anywhere with internet connectivity provides up-to-date feedback about the status of the patient, and enables improved collaboration among hospitals.4. Cloud-based Digitized Medical History: Consistent cloud-based digital record-keeping system, which is fully privacy-aware and is accessible by all authenticated users across various healthcare facilities.

Future directions for the AmbuSens system

1. Warning before heart attack occurs will be possible in the future, based on gathered data.2. The system will work even with irregular Internet connection.3. Various others sensors including but not limited to Pulse Oximeter (SpO2) will be added.4. There will be options to add scans of existing medical records (e.g. X-rays) to the system to those doctors can access patients' data from one single place.

2nd Summer Study Abroad Programme - Offered as a collaboration between Department of Geography and Regional Planning, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and
Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur
May 31, 2017